Can civil law countries get good institutions?

Can we assume that the effect of early institutions is persistent over time? Work by La Porta, Lopez de Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny, also known as the "law and finance" literature, implicitly argues that the legal tradition countries inherited or adopted in the far past has an important long-term effect on financial development. They argue financial development is related to the extent countries legally protect shareholders and creditors. Also, they find that countries that use the common law legal system have (on average) better investor protections that most civil law countries.